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With more and more slower courts, defensive tennis is here to stay;
Roger Federer could perhaps be the last proponent of offensive game.

It’s not unusual for people to glorify the past by comparing it with
the present. In tennis too, there are many who bemoan the death of the
serve-and-volley game, and pine for the revival of that dead art. A
decade back, we had different court surfaces favouring both the
attacking and defensive players; the game was highly unpredictable then
with even the less-famous players posing threat to the top seeds. Now,
with the homogenisation of courts, the game has become more or less
monopolised by the Big Four.

Gone are the days when the four different Grand Slams moulded players
with distinctive styles - the faster surfaces of the Wimbledon and the
US Open favouring the offensive serve-and-volley players, while the
medium-fast and slow courts of the Australian Open and the French Open
favouring the defensive baseliners.

With the evolution of rackets and technology, the game has become more
physical, favouring the aggressive returners. Nowadays, it’s not just
about the skill, but also about strength and stamina as players’ bodies
are required to adapt to hit power-packed groundstrokes and longer
rallies. With novelty giving way to power and endurance, the matches, at
times, turn out to be monotonous when played between similar styled contenders.

According to former world No: 1 and 14-Grand Slam winner Pete Sampras:

“Everyone is staying back and hitting the crap out of the ball,
which is fun to watch. Now everyone plays the same way; there’s just
four or five guys that are a lot better than the rest. Roger has a
little more variety, to come in, you know, slice it, chip and charge
occasionally, show a little bit of that. For the most part it’s just
everyone staying back and throwing rocks.”
While players like Rafael Nadal believes that defensive game and longer matches draw more crowd, Roger Federer, winner of 17 Grand Slams shares Sampras’ view.
"If that"s what people want to see, just rallies, rallies, rallies all
the time, then it"s good to have a slow court. If you want a bit more
even ground for everybody, even the lower-ranked guys and more danger
for the top guys, you go with a faster court," Federer said.

If the previous decade was about the overabundance of aces, now we have rallies in galore. These days it is not uncommon to see a 20 plus shots rally ending with an unforced error.
That brings to my mind the 54-shot rally between Rafael Nadal and Novak
Djokovic at the US Open final last year; Djokovic won that point when
Nadal’s delivery hit the net.

With players rarely approaching the net, we see less innovative winners
from their rackets. While it is exciting to watch the rallies, it is
equally disappointing that most points are won by forcing the opponent
to commit an error. Djokovic and Nadal, both employ this strategy
against Federer. The game has become more of technique than of
ingenuity. No one does ‘slam dunks’ like Pete Sampras anymore, nor could
they, in the current scenario.

Defensive tennis is here to stay with slow courts having higher bounce
cater to that style of play, but it is unfair to the serve-and-volley
players the same time.

Players like Jo Wilfred Tsonga would have had a better shot at winning a
Grand Slam had the courts been not standardised. In 2008, an unseeded
Tsonga was able to topple Rafael Nadal in straight sets at the
Australian Open semifinals; the very same year the tournament
authorities in Melbourne decided to change the court surface to a
comparatively faster Plexicushion from Rebound Ace. This year too, the courts were reported to be faster than the previous years, and hence it witnessed a new champion outside the Big Four, who aced and volleyed to win his first Grand Slam.

Roger Federer once cited that slower courts often meant that only the best players make it to the later rounds.“You
sort of protect the top guys really by doing that because you have the
best possible chance to have them in the semis at this point, I think.
But should that be the goal? I’m not sure,” he opined.

Although just a personal opinion, Federer has a point here. In the past
36 Grand Slam finals, only Juan Martin Del Potro (2009 US Open ) and
Stanislas Wawrinka were able to break the Big Four’s spell.

Del Potro won the US Open in a fast DecoTurf surface, but since 2011,
the US Open, traditionally considered a hard court event, too has become
slower favouring the baseliners.

Not just the Grand Slams, but even the Masters tournaments have made
changes to the court surfaces to make the matches longer and exciting.
In men’s circuit, other than all-court players like Roger Federer and
Andy Murray, we have only a handful of players like Michael Llodra,
Nicolas Mahut, Feliciano Lopez, Jo Wilfred Tsonga etc., who engage in
serve and volley game occasionally.

With tennis becoming a showdown of more or less similar players on more
or less similar courts these days, perhaps we can expect some good
matches in the wake of the Masters tournaments at Indian Wells and Miami
next month since Federer has claimed to serve and volley more in 2014.